Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy,[1][2] as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system.[3][4] "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these.[5] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them.[6] They differ in the type of social ownership they advocate, the degree to which they rely on markets or planning, how management is to be organised within productive institutions, and the role of the state in constructing socialism.[7]

Etymology

For Andrew Vincent "The word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas. This latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen."[24] The term "socialism" was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled "utopian socialism". The term "socialism" was created to contrast against the liberal doctrine of "individualism", which stressed that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another.[25] The original socialists condemned liberal individualism as failing to address social concerns of poverty, social oppression, and gross inequality of wealth.[25] They viewed liberal individualism as degenerating society into supporting selfish egoism that harmed community life through promoting a society based on competition.[25] They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism, that advocated a society based on cooperation.[25] The term socialism is attributed to Pierre Leroux,[26] and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France; and in Britain to Robert Owen in 1827, father of the cooperative movement.[27][28]

The modern definition and usage of the term "socialism" settled by the 1860s, becoming the predominant term among the earlier associated words "co-operative", "mutualist" and "associationist". The term "communism" also fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s.[29] An early distinction between "socialism" and "communism" was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption.[30] However, by 1888 the term "socialism" was used by Marxists in place of "communism", which was now considered an old-fashion synonym of "socialism". It was only until 1917 after the Bolshevik revolution that "socialism" came to refer to a distinct stage between capitalism and communism, introduced by Vladimir Lenin as a means to defend the Bolshevik seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticisms that Russia was not sufficiently developed for socialist revolution.[31]

Early socialism

Socialist models and ideas espousing common or public ownership have existed since antiquity. It has been claimed, though controversially, that there were elements of socialist thought in the politics of classical Greek philosophers Plato[32] and Aristotle.[33]Mazdak, a Persian communal proto-socialist,[34] instituted communal possessions and advocated the public good. In the period right after the French Revolution, activists and theorists like François-Noël Babeuf, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, Filippo Buonarroti, and Auguste Blanqui influenced the early French labour and socialist movements.[35] In Britain, Thomas Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor in Agrarian Justice[36] while Charles Hall wrote The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, denouncing capitalism´s effects on the poor of his time[37] which influenced the utopian schemes of Thomas Spence.[38] The first "self-conscious socialist movements developed in the 1820s and 1830s. The Owenites, Saint-Simonians and Fourierists provided a series of coherent analyses and interpretations of society. They also, especially in the case of the Owenites, overlapped with a number of other working-class movements like the Chartists in the United Kingdom."[39] The Chartists gathered significant numbers around the People’s Charter of 1838, which demanded the extension of suffrage to all male adults. Leaders in the movement also called for a more equitable distribution of income and better living conditions for the working classes. "The very first trade unions and consumers’ cooperative societies also emerged in the hinterland of the Chartist movement, as a way of bolstering the fight for these demands."[40] A later important socialist thinker in France was Pierre Joseph Proudhon who proposed his philosophy of mutualism in which "everyone had an equal claim, either alone or as part of a small cooperative, to possess and use land and other resources as needed to make a living".[41] There were also currents inspired by dissident Christianity of Christian socialism "often in Britain and then usually coming out of left liberal politics and a romantic anti-industrialism"[35] which produced theorists such as Edward Bellamy, Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley.[4]

The first advocates of socialism favoured social levelling in order to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based on individual talent. Count Henri de Saint-Simon is regarded as the first individual to coin the term socialism.[42] Saint-Simon was fascinated by the enormous potential of science and technology and advocated a socialist society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism and would be based on equal opportunities.[43][unreliable source?] He advocated the creation of a society in which each person was ranked according to his or her capacities and rewarded according to his or her work.[42] The key focus of Saint-Simon's socialism was on administrative efficiency and industrialism, and a belief that science was the key to progress.[44] This was accompanied by a desire to implement a rationally organised economy based on planning and geared towards large-scale scientific and material progress,[42] and thus embodied a desire for a more directed or planned economy. Other early socialist thinkers, such as Thomas Hodgkin and Charles Hall, based their ideas on David Ricardo's economic theories. They reasoned that the equilibrium value of commodities approximated prices charged by the producer when those commodities were in elastic supply, and that these producer prices corresponded to the embodied labour – the cost of the labour (essentially the wages paid) that was required to produce the commodities. The Ricardian socialists viewed profit, interest and rent as deductions from this exchange-value.[45]

West European social critics, including Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, Charles Hall and Saint-Simon, were the first modern socialists who criticised the excessive poverty and inequality of the Industrial Revolution. They advocated reform, with some such as Robert Owen advocating the transformation of society to small communities without private property. Robert Owen's contribution to modern socialism was his understanding that actions and characteristics of individuals were largely determined by the social environment they were raised in and exposed to.[44] On the other hand, Charles Fourier advocated phalansteres which were communities that respected individual desires (including sexual preferences), affinities and creativity and saw that work has to be made enjoyable for people.[46] The ideas of Owen and Fourier were tried in practice in numerous intentional communities around Europe and the American continent in the mid-19th century.

The celebration of the election of the Commune, 28 March 1871. The Paris Commune was a major early implementation of socialist ideas

Linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents' and opponents' cultural attitude towards religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, the word communism was too culturally and aurally close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.[47]Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, at the time when the Communist Manifesto was published, "socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not." The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered "respectable" socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists. This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany.[48] The British moral philosopherJohn Stuart Mill also came to advocate a form of economic socialism within a liberal context. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill would argue that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies."[49][50] While democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution, which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat.[51]

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from 18 March (more formally, from 28 March) to 28 May 1871. The Commune was the result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. The Commune elections held on 26 March elected a Commune council of 92 members, one member for each 20,000 residents.[52] Despite internal differences, the Council began to organise the public services essential for a city of two million residents. It also reached a consensus on certain policies that tended towards a progressive, secular, and highly-democratic social democracy. Because the Commune was only able to meet on fewer than 60 days in all, only a few decrees were actually implemented. These included the separation of church and state, the remission of rents owed for the entire period of the siege (during which, payment had been suspended), the abolition of night work in the hundreds of Paris bakeries, the granting of pensions to the unmarried companions and children of National Guards killed on active service; the free return, by the city pawnshops, of all workmen's tools and household items valued up to 20 francs, pledged during the siege.[53] The Commune was concerned that skilled workers had been forced to pawn their tools during the war; the postponement of commercial debt obligations, and the abolition of interest on the debts; and the right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it were deserted by its owner; the Commune, nonetheless, recognised the previous owner's right to compensation.[53]

The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), also known as the First International, was founded in London in 1864. The International Workingmen's Association united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon,[54]Blanquists, Philadelphes, English trade unionists, socialists and social democrats. The IWA held a preliminary conference in 1865, and had its first congress at Geneva in 1866. Due to the wide variety of philosophies present in the First International, there was conflict from the start. The first objections to Marx came from the Mutualists who opposed communism and statism. However, shortly after Mikhail Bakunin and his followers (called Collectivists while in the International) joined in 1868, the First International became polarised into two camps headed by Marx and Bakunin respectively.[55] The clearest differences between the groups emerged over their proposed strategies for achieving their visions of socialism. The First International became the first major international forum for the promulgation of socialist ideas.

The followers of Bakunin were called collectivist anarchists and sought to collectivise ownership of the means of production while retaining payment proportional to the amount and kind of labor of each individual. Like Proudhonists, they asserted the right of each individual to the product of his labor and to be remunerated for their particular contribution to production. By contrast, anarcho-communists sought collective ownership of both the means and the products of labor. Errico Malatesta put it: "...instead of running the risk of making a confusion in trying to distinguish what you and I each do, let us all work and put everything in common. In this way each will give to society all that his strength permits until enough is produced for every one; and each will take all that he needs, limiting his needs only in those things of which there is not yet plenty for every one."[56]Anarchist communism as a coherent, modern economic-political philosophy was first formulated in the Italian section of the First International by Carlo Cafiero, Emilio Covelli, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa and other ex-Mazzinian Republicans.[57] Out of respect for Mikhail Bakunin, they did not make their differences with collectivist anarchism explicit until after Bakunin's death.[58]

Syndicalism emerged in France inspired in part by the ideas of Pierre Joseph Proudhon and later by Fernand Pelloutier and Georges Sorel.[59] It developed at the end of the 19th century "out of the French trade-union movement—syndicat is the French word for trade union. It was a significant force in Italy and Spain in the early 20th century until it was crushed by the fascist regimes in those countries. In the United States, syndicalism appeared in the guise of the Industrial Workers of the World, or “Wobblies,” founded in 1905."[59] Syndicalism is an economic system where industries are organised into confederations (syndicates);[60] the economy is managed by negotiation between specialists and worker representatives of each field, comprising multiple non-competitive categorised units.[61] Thus, syndicalism is a form of communism and economic corporatism, and also refers to the political movement and tactics used to bring about this type of system. An influential anarchist movement based on syndicalist ideas is anarcho-syndicalism.[62] The International Workers Association is an international anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries.

Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public".[65] It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. Inspired by the medieval guild, theorists such as Samuel G. Hobson and G.D.H. Cole advocated the public ownership of industries and their organisation into guilds, each of which would be under the democratic control of its trade union. Guild socialists were less inclined than Fabians to invest power in a state.[59] At some point "like the American Knights of Labor, guild socialism wanted to abolish the wage system".

As the ideas of Marx and Engels took on flesh, particularly in central Europe, socialists sought to unite in an international organisation. In 1889, on the centennial of the French Revolution of 1789, the Second International was founded, with 384 delegates from 20 countries representing about 300 labour and socialist organisations.[66] It was termed the "Socialist International" and Engels was elected honorary president at the third congress in 1893. Anarchists were ejected and not allowed in, mainly due to pressure from Marxists.[67] It has been argued that, at some point, the Second International turned "into a battleground over the issue of libertarian versus authoritarian socialism. Not only did they effectively present themselves as champions of minority rights; they also provoked the German Marxists into demonstrating a dictatorial intolerance which was a factor in preventing the British labor movement from following the Marxist direction indicated by such leaders as H. M. Hyndman".[68]

Reformism arose as an alternative to revolution. Eduard Bernstein was a leading social democrat in Germany who proposed the concept of evolutionary socialism. Revolutionary socialists quickly targeted reformism: Rosa Luxemburg condemned Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism in her 1900 essay Reform or Revolution?. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple social and political movements that may define "revolution" differently from one another. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany became the largest and most powerful socialist party in Europe, despite working illegally until the anti-socialist laws were dropped in 1890. In the 1893 elections, it gained 1,787,000 votes, a quarter of the total votes cast, according to Engels. In 1895, the year of his death, Engels emphasised the Communist Manifesto's emphasis on winning, as a first step, the "battle of democracy".[69]

In February 1917, revolution exploded in Russia. Workers, soldiers and peasants established soviets (councils), the monarchy fell, and a provisional government convoked pending the election of a constituent assembly. In April of that year, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Majority (or in Russian: "Bolshevik") faction of socialists in Russia and known for his profound and controversial expansions of Marxism, was allowed to cross Germany to return to his country from exile in Switzerland. Lenin had published essays on his analysis of imperialism, the monopoly and globalisation phase of capitalism as predicted by Marx, as well as analyses on the social conditions of his contemporary time. He observed that as capitalism had further developed in Europe and America, the workers remained unable to gain class consciousness so long as they were too busy working and concerning with how to make ends meet. He therefore proposed that the social revolution would require the leadership of a vanguard party of class-conscious revolutionaries from the educated and politically active part of the population.[73] Upon arriving in Petrograd, he declared that the revolution in Russia was not over but had only begun, and that the next step was for the workers' soviets to take full state authority. He issued a thesis outlining the Bolshevik's party programme, including rejection of any legitimacy in the provisional government and advocacy for state power to be given to the peasant and working class through the soviets. The Bolsheviks became the most influential force in the soviets, and on 7 November, the capitol of the provisional government was stormed by Bolshevik Red Guards in what afterwards known as the "Great October Socialist Revolution". The rule of the provisional government was ended and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic - the world's first constitutionally socialist state - was established. On 25 January 1918, at the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!"[74] He proposed an immediate armistice on all fronts, and transferred the land of the landed proprietors, the crown and the monasteries to the peasant committees without compensation.[75]

On 26 January 1918, the day after assuming executive power, Lenin wrote Draft Regulations on Workers' Control, which granted workers control of businesses with more than five workers and office employees, and access to all books, documents and stocks, and whose decisions were to be "binding upon the owners of the enterprises".[76] Governing through the elected soviets, and in alliance with the peasant-based Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Bolshevik government began nationalising banks, industry, and disavowed the national debts of the deposed Romanov royal régime. It sued for peace, withdrawing from World War I, and convoked a Constituent Assembly in which the peasant Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SR) won a majority.[77] The Constituent Assembly elected Socialist-Revolutionary leader Victor Chernov President of a Russian republic, but rejected the Bolshevik proposal that it endorse the Soviet decrees on land, peace and workers' control, and acknowledge the power of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The next day, the Bolsheviks declared that the assembly was elected on outdated party lists,[78] and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets dissolved it.[79][80] In March 1919 world communist parties formed Comintern (also known as the Third International) at a meeting in Moscow.[81]

By 1920, the Red Army, under its commander Trotsky, had largely defeated the royalist White Armies. In 1921, War Communism was ended and, under the New Economic Policy (NEP), private ownership was allowed for small and medium peasant enterprises. While industry remained largely state-controlled, Lenin acknowledged that the NEP was a necessary capitalist measure for a country unripe for socialism. Profiteering returned in the form of "NEP men" and rich peasants (Kulaks) gained power in the countryside.[101] Nevertheless, the role of Trotsky in this episode has been questioned by other socialists, incluiding ex-Trostkists. In the United States, Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, by raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Red Army and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism[102] and anarchism.[103] A similar critique of Trotsky's role on the events around the Kronstadt rebellion was raised by the American anarchist Emma Goldman. In her essay "Trotsky Protests Too Much" she says "I admit, the dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes."[104]

In 1922, the fourth congress of the Communist International took up the policy of the United Front, urging Communists to work with rank and file Social Democrats while remaining critical of their leaders, whom they criticised for betraying the working class by supporting the war efforts of their respective capitalist classes. For their part, the social democrats pointed to the dislocation caused by revolution, and later, the growing authoritarianism of the Communist Parties. When the Communist Party of Great Britain applied to affiliate to the Labour Party in 1920, it was turned down. In 1923, on seeing the Soviet State's growing coercive power, a dying Lenin said Russia had reverted to "a bourgeois tsarist machine... barely varnished with socialism."[105] After Lenin's death in January 1924, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – then increasingly under the control of Joseph Stalin – rejected the theory that socialism could not be built solely in the Soviet Union, in favour of the concept of Socialism in One Country. Despite the marginalised Left Opposition's demand for the restoration of Soviet democracy, Stalin developed a bureaucratic, authoritarian government, that was condemned by democratic socialists, anarchists and Trotskyists for undermining the initial socialist ideals of the Bolshevik Russian Revolution.[106][107][self-published source?][unreliable source?]

After World War II, social democratic governments introduced social reform and wealth redistribution via state welfare and taxation. Social Democratic parties dominated post-war politics in countries such as France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Norway. At one point, France claimed to be the world's most state-controlled capitalist country. The nationalised public utilities included Charbonnages de France (CDF), Electricité de France (EDF), Gaz de France (GDF), Air France, Banque de France, and Régie Nationale des Usines Renault.[114] In 1945, the British Labour Party, led by Clement Attlee, was elected to office based on a radical socialist programme. The UK Labour Government nationalised major public utilities such as mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron, steel, and the Bank of England. British Petroleum was officially nationalised in 1951.[115]Anthony Crosland said that in 1956, 25% of British industry was nationalised, and that public employees, including those in nationalised industries, constituted a similar proportion of the country's total employed population.[116] The Labour Government of 1974–1979 intervened further.[117] It re-nationalised steel (1967, British Steel) after the Conservatives had denationalised it, and nationalised car production (1976, British Leyland).[118] The National Health Service provided taxpayer-funded health care to everyone, free at the point of service.[119] Working-class housing was provided in council housing estates, and university education became available via a school grant system.[120]

The Nordic model is the economic and social models of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland). During most of the post-war era, Sweden was governed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party largely in cooperation with trade unions and industry.[121] In Sweden, the Social Democratic Party held power from 1936 to 1976, 1982 to 1991, and 1994 to 2006. From 1945 to 1962, the Norwegian Labour Party held an absolute majority in the parliament led by Einar Gerhardsen who was Prime Minister with 17 years in office. This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilising the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution, and expansionary fiscal policy.[122]

The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms on issues such as gay rights, abortion, gender roles and drugs[136] in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist approach to social justice and focused mostly on labour unionisation and questions of social class.[137][138][139] They rejected involvement with the labour movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle.[140] In the U.S., the "New Left" was associated with the Hippie movement, anti-war college campus protest movements as well as the black liberation movements such as the Black Panther Party.[141] While initially formed in opposition to the "Old Left" Democratic party, groups composing the New Left gradually became central players in the Democratic coalition.[136] In 1968 in Carrara, Italy the International of Anarchist Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference held there by the three existing European federations of France, the Italian and the Iberian Anarchist Federation as well as the Bulgarian federation in French exile.

The protests of 1968 comprised a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, predominantly characterised by popular rebellions against military, capitalist, and bureaucratic elites, who responded with an escalation of political repression. In capitalist countries, these protests marked a turning point for the Civil Rights movement in the United States, which produced revolutionary movements like the Black Panther Party; the prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. organised the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice,[143] while personally showing sympathy with democratic socialism.[144] In reaction to the Tet Offensive, protests also sparked a broad movement in opposition to the Vietnam War all over the United States and even into London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. Mass socialist or communist movements grew not only in the United States but also in most European countries. The most spectacular manifestation of this were the May 1968 protests in France, in which students linked up with wildcat strikes of up to ten million workers, and for a few days the movement seemed capable of overthrowing the government. In many other capitalist countries, struggles against dictatorships, state repression, and colonisation were also marked by protests in 1968, such as the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, and the escalation of guerrilla warfare against the military dictatorship in Brazil. Countries governed by communist parties had protests against bureaucratic and military elites. 1968 was amidst the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976), and in Eastern Europe there were widespread protests that escalated particularly in the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. In response, USSR occupied Czechoslovakia. The occupation was denounced by the Italian and French[145] Communist parties, and the Communist Party of Finland. Few western European political leaders defended the occupation, among them the Portuguese communist secretary-general Álvaro Cunhal.[146] along with the Luxembourg party[145] and conservative factions of the Greek party.[145] In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a social-political youth movement mobilised against "bourgeois" elements which were seen to be infiltrating the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. This movement motivated Maoism-inspired movements around the world in the context of the Sino-Soviet split.

In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, the Socialist International had extensive contacts and discussion with the two powers of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union, about East-West relations and arms control. Since then, the SI has admitted as member parties the Nicaraguan FSLN, the left-wing Puerto Rican Independence Party, as well as former Communist parties such as the Democratic Party of the Left of Italy and the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO). The Socialist International aided social democratic parties in re-establishing themselves when dictatorship gave way to democracy in Portugal (1974) and Spain (1975). Until its 1976 Geneva Congress, the SI had few members outside Europe and no formal involvement with Latin America.[164]

Many social democratic parties, particularly after the Cold war, adopted neoliberal market policies including privatisation, deregulation and financialisation. They abandoned their pursuit of moderate socialism in favour of market liberalism. By the 1980s, with the rise of conservative neoliberal politicians such as Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Brian Mulroney in Canada and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the Western welfare state was attacked from within. Monetarists and neoliberals attacked social welfare systems as impediments to private entrepreneurship. In the UK, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock made a public attack against the entryist group Militant at the 1985 Labour Party conference. The Labour Party ruled that Militant was ineligible for affiliation with the Labour Party, and the party gradually expelled Militant supporters. The Kinnock leadership had refused to support the 1984–1985 miner's strike over pit closures, a decision that the party's left wing and the National Union of Mineworkers blamed for the strike's eventual defeat. In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a new Declaration of Principles, saying:

Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents, and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society.[176]

In the 1990s, the British Labour Party, under Tony Blair, enacted policies based on the free market economy to deliver public services via the Private finance initiative. Influential in these policies was the idea of a "third Way" which called for a re-evalutation of welfare state policies.[177] In 1995, the Labour Party re-defined its stance on socialism by re-wording Clause IV of its constitution, effectively rejecting socialism by removing all references to public, direct worker or municipal ownership of the means of production. The Labour Party stated: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that, by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create, for each of us, the means to realise our true potential, and, for all of us, a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few."[178]

Contemporary socialist politics

African

African socialism has been and continues to be a major ideology around the continent. Julius Nyerere was inspired by Fabian socialist ideals.[179] He was a firm believer in rural Africans and their traditions and ujamaa, a system of collectivisation that according to Nyerere was present before European imperialism. Essentially he believed Africans were already socialists. Other African socialists include Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. Fela Kuti was inspired by socialism and called for a democratic African republic. In South Africa the African National Congress (ANC) abandoned its partial socialist allegiances after taking power, and followed a standard neoliberal route. From 2005 through to 2007, the country was wracked by many thousands of protests from poor communities. One of these gave rise to a mass movement of shack dwellers, Abahlali baseMjondolo that, despite major police suppression, continues to work for popular people's planning and against the creation of a market economy in land and housing.

Asian

In Asia, states with socialist economies — such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam — have largely moved away from centralised economic planning in the 21st century, placing a greater emphasis on markets. Forms include the Chinese socialist market economy and the Vietnamese socialist-oriented market economy. They utilise state-owned corporate management models as opposed to modelling socialist enterprise on traditional management styles employed by government agencies. In China living standards continued to improve rapidly despite the late-2000s recession, but centralised political control remained tight.[180]Brian Reynolds Myers in his book The Cleanest Race, and later supported by other academics,[181][182] dismisses the idea that Juche is North Korea's leading ideology, regarding its public exaltation as designed to deceive foreigners and that it exists to be praised and not actually read[183] pointing out that North Korea's latest constitution, of 2009, omits all mention of communism.[184] Though the authority of the state remained unchallenged under Đổi Mới, the government of Vietnam encourages private ownership of farms and factories, economic deregulation and foreign investment, while maintaining control over strategic industries.[171] The Vietnamese economy subsequently achieved strong growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction, exports and foreign investment. However, these reforms have also caused a rise in income inequality and gender disparities.[185][186][187] Elsewhere in Asia, some elected socialist parties and communist parties remain prominent, particularly in India and Nepal. The Communist Party of Nepal in particular calls for multi-party democracy, social equality, and economic prosperity.[188] In Singapore, a majority of the GDP is still generated from the state sector comprising government-linked companies.[189] In Japan, there has been a resurgent interest in the Japanese Communist Party among workers and youth.[190][191] In Malaysia, the Socialist Party of Malaysia got its first Member of Parliament, Dr. Jeyakumar Devaraj, after the 2008 general election. In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel. Their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel's industrial output, worth US$8 billion, and 40% of its agricultural output, worth over $1.7 billion.[192] Some Kibbutzim had also developed substantial high-tech and military industries. For example, in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated $850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry.[193]

On 25 May 2014 in Spain the left wing party Podemos entered candidates for the 2014 European parliamentary elections, some of which were unemployed. In a surprise result, it polled 7.98% of the vote and thus was awarded five seats out of 54.[213][214] while the older United Left was the third largest overall force obtaining 10,03 % and 5 seats, 4 more than the previous elections.[215]

South American and Caribbean

For the Encyclopedia Britannica "the attempt by Salvador Allende to unite Marxists and other reformers in a socialist reconstruction of Chile is most representative of the direction that Latin American socialists have taken since the late 20th century. ... Several socialist (or socialist-leaning) leaders have followed Allende’s example in winning election to office in Latin American countries."[41] Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa refer to their political programmes as socialist. Chávez has adopted the term socialism of the 21st century. After winning re-election in December 2006, Chávez said, "Now more than ever, I am obliged to move Venezuela's path towards socialism."[224] Hugo Chávez was also reelected in October 2012 for his third six-year term as President, but he died in March 2013 from cancer. After Chávez's death on 5 March 2013, vice-president from Chavez's party Nicolás Maduro assumed the powers and responsibilities of the President. A special election was held on 14 April of the same year to elect a new President, which Maduro won by a tight margin as the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela; he was formally inaugurated on 19 April.[225] "Pink tide" is a term being used in contemporary 21st-century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to describe the perception that Leftist ideology in general, and Left-wing politics in particular, are increasingly influential in Latin America.[226][227][228]

Philosophy

Early socialist thought took influences from a diverse range of philosophies such as civic republicanism, Enlightenment rationalism, romanticism, forms of materialism, Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant), natural law and natural rights theory, utilitarianism and liberal political economy.[232]

The philosophical basis for a lot of early socialism was heavily influenced by the emergence of positivism during the European Enlightenment. Positivism held that both the natural and social worlds could be understood through scientific knowledge and be analyzed using scientific methods. This core outlook influenced early social scientists and different types of socialists ranging from anarchists like Peter Kropotkin to technocrats like Saint Simon.[233]

The fundamental objective of socialism is to attain an advanced level of material production and therefore greater productivity, efficiency and rationality as compared to capitalism and all previous systems, under the view that an expansion of human productive capability is the basis for the extension of freedom and equality in society.[234]

Many forms of socialist theory hold that human behaviour is largely shaped by the social environment. In particular, socialism holds that social mores, values, cultural traits and economic practices are social creations and not the result of an immutable natural law.[235][236] The object of their critique is thus not human avarice or human consciousness, but the material conditions and man-made social systems (i.e.: the economic structure of society) that gives rise to observed social problems and inefficiencies.

In the 20th century socialist economists were heavily influenced by neoclassical economics and its precepts in analytic philosophy. Notable socialists often combined neoclassical economics with Marxian analysis and historical materialism. Bertrand Russell, often considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, identified as a socialist. Bertrand Russell opposed the class struggle aspects of Marxism, viewing socialism solely as an adjustment of economic relations to accommodate modern machine production to benefit all of humanity through the progressive reduction of necessary work time.[237]

Freedom and creativity

Socialists tend to argue that "capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor."[59]

From the socialist perspective, freedom is conceived of as a concrete situation as opposed to a purely abstract or moral concept, and is closely related to human creativity and the importance socialists ascribe to creative freedom. Socialists view creativity as an essential aspect of human nature, and define freedom as a state of being where individuals are able to express their creativity unhindered by constraints of both material scarcity and coercive social institutions.[238]Marxists stress the importance of freeing the individual from coercive, exploitative and alienating social relationships they are compelled to partake in merely to survive, as well as the importance of economic development as providing the material basis for the existence of a state of society where there are enough resources to allow for each individual to pursue his or her genuine creative interests. In Marxist terminology, this is the goal of transcending alienation through material abundance.[239]

The socialist concept of individuality is thus intertwined with the concept of individual creative expression. Karl Marx believed that expansion of the productive forces and technology was the basis for the expansion of human freedom, and that socialism, being a system that is consistent with modern developments in technology, would enable the flourishing of "free individualities" through the progressive reduction of necessary labour time. The reduction of necessary labour time to a minimum would grant individuals the opportunity to pursue the development of their true individuality and creativity.[240]

Perspectives on equality

In general, models of socialism often include some form of co-operative management of economic affairs based on equal power relationships, and socialists generally oppose hierarchies of a non-technical nature.

Karl Marx eschewed theorising on moral concepts. Instead of advocating principles of justice or equality, Marx's case for socialism was grounded in economic and materialist logic and his analysis of the development of the productive forces.[241] Although Karl Marx is sometimes mistaken as an egalitarian, Marx opposed idealism and the concept of "equality". Marx did, however, have a theory of the evolution of moral principles in relation to specific economic systems.[242]

In Marxist theory, upper-stage communism is based on a principle whereby access to goods and services is based on need, stressing equal access to the articles of consumption. The "equality" in a communist society is not about equality of outcome, but about equal access to the articles of consumption so that individuals are free from dependency on other individuals or groups, and are thus able to overcome alienation.[243]

The American socialist economist John Roemer has put forth a new perspective of equality and its relationship to socialism. Roemer attempts to reformulate Marxist analysis to accommodate normative principles of distributive justice, shifting the argument for socialism away from purely technical and materialist reasons to one of distributive justice. Roemer argues that, according to the principle of distributive justice, the traditional definition of socialism based on the principle that individual compensation be proportional to the value of the labour one expands in production is inadequate. Roemer concludes that egalitarians must therefore go beyond socialism as it is classically defined.[244]

Critique of capitalism

Socialists do not base their critique of capitalism on the denunciation of greed, vilification of human nature or capitalists, or on human avarice[245] but on the structural causes of social and economic problems that emerge from the normal functioning of the capitalist system.

Socialists generally argue that capitalism concentrates power and wealth within a small segment of society that controls the means of production and derives its wealth through economic exploitation. This creates unequal social relations which fail to provide opportunities for every individual to maximise their potential,[246] and after a certain stage of development, fails to utilise available technology and resources to their maximum potential due to restrictive property relations.[247]

Economics

Socialist economics starts from the premise that "individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members."[59]

The original conception of socialism was an economic system whereby production was organised in a way to directly produce goods and services for their utility (or use-value in classical and Marxian economics): the direct allocation of resources in terms of physical units as opposed to financial calculation and the economic laws of capitalism (see: Law of value), often entailing the end of capitalistic economic categories such as rent, interest, profit and money.[248] In a fully developed socialist economy, production and balancing factor inputs with outputs becomes a technical process to be undertaken by engineers.[249]

Market socialism refers to an array of different economic theories and systems that utilise the market mechanism to organise production and to allocate factor inputs among socially owned enterprises, with the economic surplus (profits) accruing to society in a social dividend as opposed to private capital owners.[250] Variations of market socialism include Libertarian proposals such as mutualism, based on classical economics, and neoclassical economic models such as the Lange Model.

Management and control over the activities of enterprises are based on self-management and self-governance, with equal power-relations in the workplace to maximise occupational autonomy. A socialist form of organisation would eliminate controlling hierarchies so that only a hierarchy based on technical knowledge in the workplace remains. Every member would have decision-making power in the firm and would be able to participate in establishing its overall policy objectives. The policies/goals would be carried out by the technical specialists that form the coordinating hierarchy of the firm, who would establish plans or directives for the work community to accomplish these goals.[252]

The role and use of money in a hypothetical socialist economy is a contested issue. Socialists including Karl Marx, Robert Owen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill advocated various forms of labour vouchers or labour-credits, which like money would be used to acquire articles of consumption, but unlike money, they are unable to become capital and would not be used to allocate resources within the production process. Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky argued that money could not be arbitrarily abolished following a socialist revolution. Money had to exhaust its "historic mission", meaning it would have to be used until its function became redundant, eventually being transformed into bookkeeping receipts for statisticians, and only in the more distant future would money not be required for even that role.[253]

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilised in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Planned economy

A planned economy is a type of economy consisting of a mixture of public ownership of the means of production and the coordination of production and distribution through economic planning. There are two major types of planning: decentralised-planning and centralised-planning. Enrico Barone provided a comprehensive theoretical framework for a planned socialist economy. In his model, assuming perfect computation techniques, simultaneous equations relating inputs and outputs to ratios of equivalence would provide appropriate valuations in order to balance supply and demand.[255]

The most prominent example of a planned economy was the economic system of the Soviet Union, and as such, the centralised-planned economic model is usually associated with the Communist states of the 20th century, where it was combined with a single-party political system. In a centrally planned economy, decisions regarding the quantity of goods and services to be produced are planned in advance by a planning agency. (See also: Analysis of Soviet-type economic planning). The economic systems of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are further classified as command economies, which are defined as systems where economic coordination is undertaken by commands, directives and production targets.[256] Studies by economists of various political persuasions on the actual functioning of the Soviet economy indicate that it was not actually a planned economy. Instead of conscious planning, the Soviet economy was based on a process whereby the plan was modified by localised agents and the original plans went largely unfulfilled. Planning agencies, ministries and enterprises all adapted and bargained with each other during the formulation of the plan as opposed to following a plan passed down from a higher authority, leading some economists to suggest that planning did not actually take place within the Soviet economy and that a better description would be an "administered" or "managed" economy.[257]

Although central planning was largely supported by Marxist Leninists, some factions within the Soviet Union before the rise of Stalinism held positions contrary to central planning. Leon Trotsky rejected central planning in favour of decentralised planning. He argued that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, would be unable to coordinate effectively all economic activity within an economy because they operated without the input and tacit knowledge embodied by the participation of the millions of people who in the economy. As a result, central planners would be unable to respond to local economic conditions.[258]

Self-managed economy

A self-managed, decentralised economy is based on autonomous self-regulating economic units and a decentralised mechanism of resource allocation and decision-making. This model has found support in notable classical and neoclassical economists including Alfred Marshall, John Stuart Mill and Jaroslav Vanek. There are numerous variations of self-management, including labour-managed firms and worker-managed firms. The goals of self-management are to eliminate exploitation and reduce alienation.[259]Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public".[260] It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century.[260] It was strongly associated with G. D. H. Cole and influenced by the ideas of William Morris.

One such system is the cooperative economy, a largely free market economy in which workers manage the firms and democratically determine remuneration levels and labour divisions. Productive resources would be legally owned by the cooperative and rented to the workers, who would enjoy usufruct rights.[261] Another form of decentralised planning is the use of cybernetics, or the use of computers to manage the allocation of economic inputs. The socialist-run government of Salvador Allende in Chile experimented with Project Cybersyn, a real-time information bridge between the government, state enterprises and consumers.[262] Another, more recent, variant is participatory economics, wherein the economy is planned by decentralised councils of workers and consumers. Workers would be remunerated solely according to effort and sacrifice, so that those engaged in dangerous, uncomfortable, and strenuous work would receive the highest incomes and could thereby work less.[263] A contemporary model for a self-managed, non-market socialism is Pat Devine's model of negotiated coordination. Negotiated coordination is based upon social ownership by those affected by the use of the assets involved, with decisions made by those at the most localised level of production.[264]

Michel Bauwens identifies the emergence of the open software movement and peer-to-peer production as a new, alternative mode of production to the capitalist economy and centrally planned economy that is based on collaborative self-management, common ownership of resources, and the production of use-values through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital.[265]

The economy of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia established a system based on market-based allocation, social ownership of the means of production and self-management within firms. This system substituted Yugoslavia's Soviet-type central planning with a decentralised, self-managed system after reforms in 1953.[269]

The Marxian economistRichard D. Wolff argues that "re-organising production so that workers become collectively self-directed at their work-sites" not only moves society beyond both capitalism and state socialism of the last century, but would also mark another milestone in human history, similar to earlier transitions out of slavery and feudalism.[270] As an example, Wolff claims that Mondragon is "a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organisation of production."[271]

State-directed economy

State socialism can be used to classify any variety of socialist philosophies that advocates the ownership of the means of production by the state apparatus, either as a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, or as an end-goal in itself. Typically it refers to a form of technocratic management, whereby technical specialists administer or manage economic enterprises on behalf of society (and the public interest) instead of workers' councils or workplace democracy.

A state-directed economy may refer to a type of mixed economy consisting of public ownership over large industries, as promoted by various Social democratic political parties during the 20th century. This ideology influenced the policies of the British Labour Party during Clement Attlee's administration. In the biography of the 1945 UK Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Francis Beckett states: "the government... wanted what would become known as a mixed economy".[272]

Market socialism

Market socialism consists of publicly owned or cooperatively owned enterprises operating in a market economy. It is a system that utilises the market and monetary prices for the allocation and accounting of the means of production, thereby retaining the process of capital accumulation. The profit generated would be used to directly remunerate employees or finance public institutions.[275] In state-oriented forms of market socialism, in which state enterprises attempt to maximise profit, the profits can be used to fund government programs and services through a social dividend, eliminating or greatly diminishing the need for various forms of taxation that exist in capitalist systems. The neoclassical economist Léon Walras believed that a socialist economy based on state ownership of land and natural resources would provide a means of public finance to make income taxes unnecessary.[276] Yugoslavia implemented a market socialist economy based on cooperatives and worker self-management.

Mutualism is an economic theory and anarchist school of thought that advocates a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labour in the free market.[277] Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration.[278] Mutualism is based on a labour theory of value that holds that when labour or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labour necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility".[279]

The current economic system in China is formally referred to as a Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. It combines a large state sector that comprises the 'commanding heights' of the economy, which are guaranteed their public ownership status by law,[280] with a private sector mainly engaged in commodity production and light industry responsible from anywhere between 33%[281] (People's Daily Online 2005) to over 70% of GDP generated in 2005.[282] Although there has been a rapid expansion of private-sector activity since the 1980s, privatisation of state assets was virtually halted and were partially reversed in 2005.[283] The current Chinese economy consists of 150 corporatised state-owned enterprises that report directly to China's central government.[284] By 2008, these state-owned corporations had become increasingly dynamic and generated large increases in revenue for the state,[285][286] resulting in a state-sector led recovery during the 2009 financial crises while accounting for most of China's economic growth.[287] However, the Chinese economic model is widely cited as a contemporary form of state capitalism, the major difference between Western capitalism and the Chinese model being the degree of state-ownership of shares in publicly listed corporations.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has adopted a similar model after the Doi Moi economic renovation, but slightly differs from the Chinese model in that the Vietnamese government retains firm control over the state sector and strategic industries, but allows for private-sector activity in commodity production.[288]

Social and political theory

In this context, socialism has been used to refer to a political movement, a political philosophy and a hypothetical form of society these movements aim to achieve. As a result, in a political context socialism has come to refer to the strategy (for achieving a socialist society) or policies promoted by socialist organisations and socialist political parties; all of which have no connection to socialism as a socioeconomic system.

Marxism

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. – Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program[289]

The writings of Karl Marx provided the basis for the development of Marxist political theory and Marxian economics.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that socialism would emerge from historical necessity as capitalism rendered itself obsolete and unsustainable from increasing internal contradictions emerging from the development of the productive forces and technology. It was these advances in the productive forces combined with the old social relations of production of capitalism that would generate contradictions, leading to working-class consciousness.[290]

Marx and Engels held the view that the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the working class in the broadest Marxist sense) would be moulded by their conditions of wage slavery, leading to a tendency to seek their freedom or emancipation by overthrowing ownership of the means of production by capitalists, and consequently, overthrowing the state that upheld this economic order. For Marx and Engels, conditions determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would wither away.

The Marxist conception of socialism is that of a specific historical phase that will displace capitalism and precede communism. The major characteristics of socialism (particularly as conceived by Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune of 1871) are that the proletariat will control the means of production through a workers' state erected by the workers in their interests. Economic activity would still be organised through the use of incentive systems and social classes would still exist, but to a lesser and diminishing extent than under capitalism.

Marx argued that the material productive forces (in industry and commerce) brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience.[289]

Che Guevara and Mao Zedong sought socialism based on the rural peasantry rather than the urban working class. Che Guevara attempted to inspire the peasants of Bolivia by his own example into a change of consciousness. Guevara said in 1965:

Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level, within the societies where socialism is being built or has been built, and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression.[293]

Evolutionary and Institutional economics

Thorstein Veblen, a leading American institutionalist and evolutionary economist, argued that a subset of the working-class, the technical specialists and engineers, would become the driving force behind socioeconomic change within capitalism. There is an antagonism between industry and business, where industry refers to the process of producing goods and services and business is defined as the process of "making money". Thorstein Veblen saw socialism as an immediate stage in an ongoing evolutionary process in economics that would result from the natural decay of the system of business enterprise. In contrast to Marx, he did not believe socialism would be the result of political struggle or political revolution by the working class as a whole and did not believe it to be the ultimate goal of humanity.[294] But like Marx, Veblen saw technology as the underlying force driving social change.

Joseph Schumpeter viewed intellectuals and the intelligentsia as the group within society that would gradually move society toward socialism. Socialism would be partially a result of socio-economic evolution, the growth of workers' self-management, industrial democracy and social planning, and partially from political pressure on the part of intellectuals in Western society.[295]

Role of the state

Socialists have taken different perspectives on the state and the role it should play in revolutionary struggles, in constructing socialism, and within an established socialist economy.

In the 19th century the philosophy of state socialism was first explicitly expounded by the German political philosopher Ferdinand Lassalle. In contrast to Karl Marx’s perspective of the state, Lassalle rejected the concept of the state as a class-based power structure whose main function was to preserve existing class structures. Thus Lassalle also rejected the Marxist view that the state was destined to “wither away”. Lassalle considered the state to be an entity independent of class allegiances and an instrument of justice that would therefore be essential for achieving socialism.[296]

Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialists including reformists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism and the Mensheviks, Anarchists and Libertarian socialists criticised the idea of using the state to conduct central planning and own the means of production as a way to establish socialism. Following the victory of Leninism in Russia, the idea of "state socialism" spread rapidly throughout the socialist movement, and eventually "state socialism" came to be identified with the Soviet economic model.[297]

Joseph Schumpeter rejected the association of socialism (and social ownership) with state ownership over the means of production, because the state as it exists in its current form is a product of capitalist society and cannot be transplanted to a different institutional framework. Schumpeter argued that there would be different institutions within socialism than those that exist within modern capitalism, just as feudalism had its own distinct and unique institutional forms. The state, along with concepts like property and taxation were concepts exclusive to commercial society (capitalism) and attempting to place them within the context of a future socialist society would amount to a distortion of these concepts by using them out of context[298]

Utopian versus scientific

Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen, which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists.[299] However, visions of imaginary ideal societies, which competed with revolutionary social-democratic movements, were viewed as not being grounded in the material conditions of society and as reactionary.[300] Although it is technically possible for any set of ideas or any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label "utopian" by later socialists as a negative term, in order to imply naivete and dismiss their ideas as fanciful or unrealistic.[44]

Religious sects whose members live communally, such as the Hutterites, for example, are not usually called "utopian socialists", although their way of living is a prime example. They have been categorised as religious socialists by some. Likewise, modern intentional communities based on socialist ideas could also be categorised as "utopian socialist".

For Marxists, the development of capitalism in western Europe provided a material basis for the possibility of bringing about socialism because, according to the Communist Manifesto, "What the bourgeoisie produces above all is its own grave diggers",[301] namely the working class, which must become conscious of the historical objectives set it by society.

Reform versus revolution

Revolutionary socialists believe that a social revolution is necessary to effect structural changes to the socio-economic structure of society. Among revolutionary socialists there are differences in strategy, theory and the definition of "revolution". Orthodox Maxists and Left Communists take an Impossibilist stance, believing revolution should be spontaneous as a result of contradictions in society resulting from technological changes in the productive forces. Lenin theorised that under capitalism the workers cannot achieve class consciousness beyond organising into unions and making demands of the capitalists. Therefore, Leninists advocate that it is historically necessity for a vanguard of class conscious revolutionaries to take a central role in coordinating the social revolution to overthrow the capitalist state and, eventually, the institution of the state altogether.[302] "Revolution" is not necessarily defined by revolutionary socialists as violent insurrection,[303] but as a complete dismantling and rapid transformation of all areas of class society led by the majority of the masses: the working class.

Reformism is generally associated with social democracy and gradualist democratic socialism. Reformism is the belief that socialists should stand in parliamentary elections within capitalist society, and if elected, us the machinery of government to pass political and social reforms for the purposes of ameliorating the instabilities and inequities of capitalism.

Politics

The major socialist political movements are described below. Independent socialist theorists, utopian socialist authors, and academic supporters of socialism may not be represented in these movements. Some political groups have called themselves socialist while holding views that some consider antithetical to socialism. The term socialist has also been used by some politicians on the political right as an epithet against certain individuals who do not consider themselves to be socialists, and against policies that are not considered socialist by their proponents.

There are many variations of socialism and as such there is no single definition encapsulating all of socialism. However there have been common elements identified by scholars.[304] Angelo S. Rappoport in his Dictionary of Socialism (1924) analysed forty definitions of socialism to conclude that common elements of socialism include: general criticisms of the social effects of private ownership and control of capital – as being the cause of poverty, low wages, unemployment, economic and social inequality, and a lack of economic security; a general view that the solution to these problems is a form of collective control over the means of production, distribution and exchange (the degree and means of control vary amongst socialist movements); agreement that the outcome of this collective control should be a society based upon social justice, including social equality, economic protection of people, and should provide a more satisfying life for most people.[305]Bhikhu Parekh in The Concepts of Socialism (1975) identifies four core principles of socialism and particularly socialist society: sociality, social responsibility, cooperation, and planning.[306]Michael Freeden in his study Ideologies and Political Theory (1996) states that all socialists share five themes: the first is that socialism posits that society is more than a mere collection of individuals; second, that it considers human welfare a desirable objective; third, that it considers humans by nature to be active and productive; fourth, it holds the belief of human equality; and fifth, that history is progressive and will create positive change on the condition that humans work to achieve such change.[306]

Libertarian socialism

The first anarchist journal to use the term "libertarian" was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social and it was published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque.[320]Joseph Déjacque was the first recorded person to describe himself as "libertarian".[321]

Democratic socialism

Modern democratic socialism is a broad political movement that seeks to promote the ideals of socialism within the context of a democratic system. Some Democratic socialists support social democracy as a temporary measure to reform the current system, while others reject reformism in favour of more revolutionary methods. Modern social democracy emphasises a program of gradual legislative modification of capitalism in order to make it more equitable and humane, while the theoretical end goal of building a socialist society is either completely forgotten or redefined in a pro-capitalist way. The two movements are widely similar both in terminology and in ideology, although there are a few key differences.

The major difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is the object of their politics: contemporary social democrats support a welfare state and unemployment insurance as a means to "humanise" capitalism, whereas democratic socialists seek to replace capitalism with a socialist economic system, arguing that any attempt to "humanise" capitalism through regulations and welfare policies would distort the market and create economic contradictions.[347]

Democratic socialism generally refers to any political movement that seeks to establish an economy based on economic democracy by and for the working class. Democratic socialism is difficult to define, and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some definitions simply refer to all forms of socialism that follow an electoral, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a revolutionary one.[348]

You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.

Religious socialism

Christian socialism is a broad concept involving an intertwining of the Christian religion with the politics and economic theories of socialism.

Islamic socialism is a term coined by various Muslim leaders to describe a more spiritual form of socialism. Muslim socialists believe that the teachings of the Qur'an and Muhammad are compatible with principles of equality and public ownership drawing inspiration from the early Medina welfare state established by Muhammad. Muslim Socialists are more conservative than their western contemporaries and find their roots in Anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and Arab nationalism. Islamic Socialist leaders believe in Democracy and deriving legitimacy from public mandate as opposed to religious texts.

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology which "is derived from a socialist tradition of political thought. Many social democrats refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists, and some use these terms interchangeably. Others have opined that there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term ‘social democracy’ only."[357] There are two main directions, either to establish democratic socialism, or to build a welfare state within the framework of the capitalist system. The first variant has officially its goal by establishing democratic socialism through reformist and gradualist methods.[358] In the second variant Social democracy becomes a policy regime involving a welfare state, collective bargaining schemes, support for publicly financed public services, and a Capitalist-based economy like a mixed economy. It is often used in this manner to refer to the social models and economic policies prominent in Western and Northern Europe during the later half of the 20th century.[359][360] It has been described by Jerry Mander as “hybrid” economics, an active collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions, and, while such systems aren't perfect, they tend to provide high standards of living.[361] Numerous studies and surveys indicate that people tend to live happier lives in social democratic societies rather than neoliberal ones.[362][363][364][365]

Many socialists were early advocates for LGBT rights. For early socialist Charles Fourier, true freedom could only occur without suppressing passions; the suppression of passions is not only destructive to the individual, but to society as a whole. Writing before the advent of the term 'homosexuality', Fourier recognised that both men and women have a wide range of sexual needs and preferences which may change throughout their lives, including same-sex sexuality and androgénité. He argued that all sexual expressions should be enjoyed as long as people are not abused, and that "affirming one's difference" can actually enhance social integration.[383] In Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism, he passionately advocates for an egalitarian society where wealth is shared by all, while warning of the dangers of social systems that crush individuality. Wilde's libertarian socialist politics were shared by other figures who actively campaigned for homosexual emancipation in the late 19th century such as Edward Carpenter.[384]The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women was a book from 1908 and an early work arguing for gay liberation written by Edward Carpenter[385] who was also an influential personality in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. After the Russian Revolution under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Union abolished previous laws against homosexuality.[386]Harry Hay was an early leader in the American LGBT rights movement as well as a member of the Communist Party USA. He is known for his roles in helping to found several gay organisations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States which in its early days had a strong marxist influence. The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality reports that "As Marxists the founders of the group believed that the injustice and oppression which they suffered stemmed from relationships deeply embedded in the structure of American society".[387] Also emerging from a number of events, such as the May 1968 insurrection in France, the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US and the Stonewall riots of 1969, militant Gay Liberation organisations began to spring up around the world. Many saw their roots in left radicalism more than in the established homophile groups of the time,[388] The Gay Liberation Front took an anti-capitalist stance and attacked the nuclear family and traditional gender roles.[389]

According to the Austrian school economistLudwig von Mises, an economic system that does not use money, financial calculation and market pricing will be unable to effectively value capital goods and coordinate production, and therefore these types of socialism are impossible because they lack the necessary information to perform economic calculation in the first place.[414][415] Another central argument leveled against socialist systems based on economic planning is based on the use of dispersed knowledge. State socialism is unfeasible in this view because information cannot be aggregated by a central body and effectively used to formulate a plan for an entire economy, because doing so would result in distorted or absent price signals.[416]

Many economic criticisms of socialism focus on the experiences of Soviet-type planned economies. It is argued that a lack of budget constraints in enterprises operating in a planned economy reduces incentives for enterprises to act on information efficiently, thereby reducing overall welfare for society.[417]

Other economists criticise models of socialism based on neoclassical economics for their reliance on of economic equilibrium and pareto efficiency.[418]

In light of these criticisms, philosophers such as Howard Zinn retort:

Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism.[419]

References

^Bertrand Badie; Dirk Berg-Schlosser; Leonardo Morlino (2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE Publications, Inc. p. 2456. ISBN978-1412959636. Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

^"2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any of various social or political theories or movements in which the common welfare is to be achieved through the establishment of a socialist economic system" "Socialism" at The Free dictionary

^Kotz, David M. "Socialism and Capitalism: Are They Qualitatively Different Socioeconomic Systems?" (PDF). University of Massachusetts. Retrieved February 19, 2011. "This understanding of socialism was held not just by revolutionary Marxist socialists but also by evolutionary socialists, Christian socialists, and even anarchists. At that time, there was also wide agreement about the basic institutions of the future socialist system: public ownership instead of private ownership of the means of production, economic planning instead of market forces, production for use instead of for profit."

^Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists, by Schweickart, David; Lawler, James; Ticktin, Hillel; Ollman, Bertell. 1998. From "The Difference Between Marxism and Market Socialism" (pp. 61–63): "More fundamentally, a socialist society must be one in which the economy is run on the principle of the direct satisfaction of human needs...Exchange-value, prices and so money are goals in themselves in a capitalist society or in any market. There is no necessary connection between the accumulation of capital or sums of money and human welfare. Under conditions of backwardness, the spur of money and the accumulation of wealth has led to a massive growth in industry and technology ... It seems an odd argument to say that a capitalist will only be efficient in producing use-value of a good quality when trying to make more money than the next capitalist. It would seem easier to rely on the planning of use-values in a rational way, which because there is no duplication, would be produced more cheaply and be of a higher quality."

^Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the name of Socialism: The Left-Wing origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. ISBN978-0-8047-7566-3.

^"Authority is defined in terms of the right to exercise social control (as explored in the "sociology of power") and the correlative duty to obey (as explred in the "philosophy of practical reason"). Anarchism is distinguished, philosophically, by its scepticism towards such moral relations – by its questioning of the claims made for such normative power – and, practically, by its challenge to those "authoritative" powers which cannot justify their claims and which are therefore deemed illegitimate or without moral foundation."Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism by Paul McLaughlin. AshGate. 2007. pg. 1

^ abc"Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations." Emma Goldman. "What it Really Stands for Anarchy" in Anarchism and Other Essays.

^ abIndividualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker defined anarchism as opposition to authority as follows "They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, — follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism...Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity. Good representatives of the first are seen in the Catholic Church and the Russian autocracy; of the second, in the Protestant Church and the Manchester school of politics and political economy; of the third, in the atheism of Gambetta and the socialism of Karl Marx." Benjamin Tucker. Individual Liberty.

^Anarchist historian George Woodcock report of Mikhail Bakunin's anti-authoritarianism and shows opposition to both state and non-state forms of authority as follows: "All anarchists deny authority; many of them fight against it." (pg. 9)...Bakunin did not convert the League's central committee to his full program, but he did persuade them to accept a remarkably radical recommendation to the Berne Congress of September 1868, demanding economic equality and implicitly attacking authority in both Church and State."

^Gasper, Phillip (October 2005). The Communist Manifesto: a road map to history's most important political document. Haymarket Books. p. 24. ISBN1-931859-25-6. As the nineteenth century progressed, "socialist" came to signify not only concern with the social question, but opposition to capitalism and support for some form of social ownership.

^"Socialism was the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide. It was a political ideology (or world view), a wide and divided political movement..." George Thomas Kurian (ed). The Encyclopedia of Political Science CQ Press. Washington D.c. 2011. Pgs. 1554

^Russell, Bertrand (1972). A History of Western Philosophy. Touchstone. p. 781

^Williams, Raymond (1983). "Socialism". Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society, revised edition. Oxford University Press. p. 288. ISBN0-19-520469-7. Modern usage began to settle from the 1860s, and in spite of the earlier variations and distinctions it was socialist and socialism which came through as the predominant words...Communist, in spite of the distinction that had been made in the 1840s, was very much less used, and parties in the Marxist tradition took some variant of social and socialist as titles.

^Steele, David (1992). From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court Publishing Company. p. 43. ISBN978-0875484495. One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption.

^Steele, David (1992). From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court Publishing Company. pp. 44–45. ISBN978-0875484495. By 1888, the term ‘socialism’ was in general use among Marxists, who had dropped ‘communism’, now considered an old fashioned term meaning the same as ‘socialism’...At the turn of the century, Marxists called themselves socialists...The definition of socialism and communism as successive stages was introduced into Marxist theory by Lenin in 1917...the new distinction was helpful to Lenin in defending his party against the traditional Marxist criticism that Russia was too backward for a socialist revolution

^"In Fourier's system of Harmony all creative activity including industry, craft, agriculture, etc. will arise from liberated passion – this is the famous theory of "attractive labour." Fourier sexualises work itself – the life of the Phalanstery is a continual orgy of intense feeling, intellection, & activity, a society of lovers & wild enthusiasts....The Harmonian does not live with some 1600 people under one roof because of compulsion or altruism, but because of the sheer pleasure of all the social, sexual, economic, "gastrosophic," cultural, & creative relations this association allows & encourages"."The Lemonade Ocean & Modern Times A Position Paper by Hakim Bey

^"Mill, in contrast, advances a form of liberal democratic socialism for the enlargement of freedom as well as to realise social and distributive justice. He offers a powerful account of economic injustice and justice that is centered on his understanding of freedom and its conditions." Bruce Baum, "[J. S. Mill and Liberal Socialism]," Nadia Urbanati and Alex Zacharas, eds., J. S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

^Robert Gildea, "1848 in European Collective Memory," in Evans and Strandmann, eds. The Revolutions in Europe, 1848–1849 pp 207–235

^Blin, Arnaud (2007). The History of Terrorism. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 116. ISBN0-520-24709-4.

^"It is unnecessary to repeat the accounts of the Geneva and Hague Congresses of the International in which the issues between Marx and Bakunin were fought out and the organisation itself split apart into the dying Marxist rump centered around the New York General Council and the anti-authoritarian majority centred around the Bakuninist Jura Federation. But it is desirable to consider some of the factors underlying the final emergence of a predominantly anarchist International in 1872."George Woodcock. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962). p. 243.

^Margaret Cole (1961). The Story of Fabian Socialism. Stanford University Press. ISBN978-0804700917.

^Discovering Imperialism: Social Democracy to World War I, Nov 25, 2011. (p. 249): "...the pro-imperialist majority, led by Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw, advanced an intellectual justification for central control by the British Empire, arguing that existing institutions should simply work more 'efficiently'."

^Bertil, Hessel, Introduction, Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third International, pxiii, Ink Links (1980)

^"We have always proclaimed, and repeated, this elementary truth of Marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in a number of advanced countries." Lenin, Sochineniya (Works), 5th ed. Vol. XLIV, p. 418, Feb 1922. (Quoted by Mosche Lewin in Lenin's Last Struggle, p. 4. Pluto (1975))

^"The Munich Soviet (or "Council Republic") of 1919 exhibited certain features of the TAZ, even though – like most revolutions – its stated goals were not exactly "temporary." Gustav Landauer's participation as Minister of Culture along with Silvio Gesell as Minister of Economics and other anti-authoritarian and extreme libertarian socialists such as the poet/playwrights Erich Mühsam and Ernst Toller, and Ret Marut (the novelist B. Traven), gave the Soviet a distinct anarchist flavor." Hakim Bey. "T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism"

^Hirsch, Donald; Kett, Joseph F.; Trefil, James S. (2002), The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 316, ISBN0-618-22647-8, Eastern Bloc. The name applied to the former communist states of eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia and Albania, as well as the countries of the Warsaw Pact

^However Giuseppe Di Vittorio, chief of the Communist trade union CGIL, repudiated the leadership position, as did the prominent party members Antonio Giolitti, Loris Fortuna, and many other influential Communist intellectuals, who later were expelled or left the party. Pietro Nenni, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, a close ally of the PCI, opposed the Soviet intervention as well. Napolitano, elected in 2006 as President of the Italian Republic, wrote in his 2005 political autobiography that he regretted his justification of Soviet action in Hungary, and that at the time he believed in Party unity and the international leadership of Soviet communism.Napolitano, Giorgio (2005). Dal Pci al socialismo europeo. Un'autobiografia politica (From the Communist Party to European Socialism. A political autobiography) (in Italian). Laterza. ISBN88-420-7715-1.

^Within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), dissent that began with the repudiation of Stalin by John Saville and E.P. Thompson, influential historians and members of the Communist Party Historians Group, culminated in a loss of thousands of party members as events unfolded in Hungary. Peter Fryer, correspondent for the CPGB newspaper The Daily Worker, reported accurately on the violent suppression of the uprising, but his dispatches were heavily censored; Fryer resigned from the paper upon his return, and was later expelled from the Communist Party. Fryer, Peter (1957). Hungarian Tragedy. London: D. Dobson. Chapter 9 (The Second Soviet Intervention). ASIN B0007J7674.

^"One manifestation of this connection was liberation theology—sometimes characterised as an attempt to marry Marx and Jesus—which emerged among Roman Catholic theologians in Latin America in the 1960s." "socialism" atEncyclopedia BritannicaOnline.

^Claessens, August (April 2009). The logic of socialism. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. p. 15. ISBN978-1104238407. The individual is largely a product of his environment and much of his conduct and behavior is the reflex of getting a living in a particular stage of society.

^Ferri, Enrico, "Socialism and Modern Science", in Evolution and Socialism (1912), p. 79:

Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute conflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has established are natural laws ... not in the sense that they are laws naturally determined by the condition of the social organism (which would be correct), but that they are absolute laws, that is to say that they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though they may be subject to modification in details. Scientific socialism holds, the contrary, that the laws established by classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws peculiar to the present period in the history of civilised humanity, and that they are, consequently, laws essentially relative to the period of their analysis and discovery.

^Karl Marx (1857–1861). "The Grundrisse". Retrieved 18 December 2013. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.

^Claessens, August (April 2009). The logic of socialism. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. pp. 14–15. ISBN978-1104238407. The denunciation of greed, the vilification of human nature, the bitter cries and calls for punishment and redribution accomplishes very little good. Imprisoning or hanging the profiteer is no remedy. Those who believe and argue to the contrary are often mistaken for Socialists, but the slightest knowledge of Socialism is sufficient to dispel such ignorant raving.

^Socialism. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Retrieved 14 October 2009. Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition – people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society.

^Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the name of Socialism: The Left-Wing origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 20. ISBN978-0-8047-7566-3. According to nineteenth-century socialist views, socialism would function without capitalist economic categories – such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent – and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognised the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists more commonly believed that the socialist economy would soon administratively mobilise the economy in physical units without the use of prices or money.

^Gregory and Stuart, Paul and Robert (2004). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century, Seventh Edition: "Socialist Economy". George Hoffman. p. 117. ISBN0-618-26181-8. In such a setting, information problems are not serious, and engineers rather than economists can resolve the issue of factor proportions.

^O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 70. ISBN0-415-24187-1. Market socialism is a general designation for a number of models of economic systems. On the one hand, the market mechanism is utilised to distribute economic output, to organise production and to allocate factor inputs. On the other hand, the economic surplus accrues to society at large rather than to a class of private (capitalist) owners, through some form of collective, public or social ownership of capital.

^The Political Economy of Socialism, by Horvat, Branko. 1982. (p. 197): "The sandglass (socialist) model is based on the observation that there are two fundamentally different spheres of activity or decision making. The first is concerned with value judgments, and consequently each individual counts as one in this sphere. In the second, technical decisions are made on the basis of technical competence and expertise. The decisions of the first sphere are policy directives; those of the second, technical directives. The former are based on political authority as exercised by all members of the organisation; the latter, on professional authority specific to each member and growing out of the division of labour. Such an organisation involves a clearly defined coordinating hierarchy but eliminates a power hierarchy."

^Leon Trotsky – The Revolution Betrayed. 1936 Full Text. Chapter 4: "Having lost its ability to bring happiness or trample men in the dust, money will turn into mere bookkeeping receipts for the convenience of statisticians and for planning purposes. In the still more distant future, probably these receipts will not be needed."

^Nove, Alec (1991). The Economics of Feasible Socialism, Revisited. Routledge. p. 78. ISBN978-0043350492. Several authors of the most diverse political views have stated that there is in fact no planning in the Soviet Union: Eugene Zaleski, J. Wilhelm, Hillel Ticktin. They all in their very different ways note the fact that plans are often (usually) unfulfilled, that information flows are distorted, that plan-instructions are the subject of bargaining, that there are many distortions and inconsistencies, indeed that (as many sources attest) plans are frequently altered within the period to which they are supposed to apply...

^O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. pp. 8–9. ISBN0-415-24187-1. One finds favorable opinions of cooperatives also among other great economists of the past, such as, for example, John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall...In eliminating the domination of capital over labour, firms run by workers eliminate capitalist exploitation and reduce alienation.

^Dolgoff, S. (1974), The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution. In The Spanish Revolution, the Luger P08 was used as a weapon of choice by the Spanish., ISBN978-0-914156-03-1

"The disappearances of slaves and masters and lords and serfs would now be replicated by the disappearance of capitalists and workers. Such oppositional categories would no longer apply to the relationships of production, Instead, workers would become their own collective bosses. The two categories – employer and employee – would be integrated in the same individuals."

^Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century, 2003, by Gregory and Stuart. ISBN 0-618-26181-8. (p. 142): "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital...The state owns the means of production, and returns accrue to society at large."

^Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the name of Socialism: The Left-Wing origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 21. ISBN978-0-8047-7566-3. For Walras, socialism would provide the necessary institutions for free competition and social justice. Socialism, in Walras's view, entailed state ownership of land and natural resources and the abolition of income taxes. As owner of land and natural resources, the state could then lease these resources to many individuals and groups, which would eliminate monopolies and thus enable free competition. The leasing of land and natural resources would also provide enough state revenue to make income taxes unnecessary, allowing a worker to invest his savings and become 'an owner or capitalist at the same time that he remains a worker.

^The life of Thorstein Veblen and perspectives on his thought, Wood, John (1993). The life of Thorstein Veblen and perspectives on his thought. introd. Thorstein Veblen. New York: Routledge. ISBN0-415-07487-8. The decisive difference between Marx and Veblen lay in their respective attitudes on socialism. For while Marx regarded socialism as the ultimate goal for civilisation, Veblen saw socialism as but one stage in the economic evolution of society.

^John Medearis, "Schumpeter, the New Deal, and Democracy", The American Political Science Review, 1997.

^An Outline on the History of Economic Thought, Screpanti and Zamagni (2005). An Outline on the History of Economic Thought (2nd ed.). Oxford. It should not be forgotten, however, that in the period of the Second International, some of the reformist currents of Marxism, as well as some of the extreme left-wing ones, not to speak of the anarchist groups, had already criticised the view that State ownership and central planning is the best road to socialism. But with the victory of Leninism in Russia, all dissent was silenced, and socialism became identified with ‘democratic centralism’, ‘central planning’, and State ownership of the means of production.

^Schumpeter, Joseph (2008). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Harper Perennial. p. 169. ISBN978-0-06-156161-0. But there are still others (concepts and institutions) which by virtue of their nature cannot stand transplantation and always carry the flavor of a particular institutional framework. It is extremely dangerous, in fact it amounts to a distortion of historical description, to use them beyond the social world or culture whose denizens they are. Now ownership or property – also, so I believe, taxation – are such denizens of the world of commercial society, exactly as knights and fiefs are denizens of the feudal world. But so is the state (a denizen of commercial society).

^"ANARCHISM, a social philosophy that rejects authoritarian government and maintains that voluntary institutions are best suited to express man's natural social tendencies." George Woodcock. "Anarchism" at The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

^"as many anarchists have stressed, it is not government as such that they find objectionable, but the hierarchical forms of government associated with the nation state." Judith Suissa. Anarchism and Education: a Philosophical Perspective. Routledge. New York. 2006. p. 7

^"That is why Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organisation and preaches free agreement — at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist." Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism: its philosophy and ideal

^"Authority is defined in terms of the right to exercise social control (as explored in the "sociology of power") and the correlative duty to obey (as explored in the "philosophy of practical reason"). Anarchism is distinguished, philosophically, by its scepticism towards such moral relations – by its questioning of the claims made for such normative power – and, practically, by its challenge to those "authoritative" powers which cannot justify their claims and which are therefore deemed illegitimate or without moral foundation."Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism by Paul McLaughlin. AshGate. 2007. p. 1

^Individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker defined anarchism as opposition to authority as follows "They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, – follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism ... Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity. Good representatives of the first are seen in the Catholic Church and the Russian autocracy; of the second, in the Protestant Church and the Manchester school of politics and political economy; of the third, in the atheism of Gambetta and the socialism of Karl Marx." Benjamin Tucker. Individual Liberty.

^Anarchist historian George Woodcock report of Mikhail Bakunin's anti-authoritarianism and shows opposition to both state and non-state forms of authority as follows: "All anarchists deny authority; many of them fight against it." (p. 9) ... Bakunin did not convert the League's central committee to his full program, but he did persuade them to accept a remarkably radical recommendation to the Berne Congress of September 1868, demanding economic equality and implicitly attacking authority in both Church and State."

^"unlike other socialists, they tend to see (to various different degrees, depending on the thinker) to be skeptical of centralised state intervention as the solution to capitalist exploitation..." Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." Social Philosophy and Policy. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. Pg. 305

^"We do not equate socialism with planning, state control, or nationalisation of industry, although we understand that in a socialist society (not "under" socialism) economic activity will be collectively controlled, managed, planned, and owned. Similarly, we believe that socialism will involve equality, but we do not think that socialism is equality, for it is possible to conceive of a society where everyone is equally oppressed. We think that socialism is incompatible with one-party states, with constraints on freedom of speech, with an elite exercising power 'on behalf of' the people, with leader cults, with any of the other devices by which the dying society seeks to portray itself as the new society. "What is Libertarian Socialism?" by Ulli Diemer. Volume 2, Number 1 (Summer 1997 issue) of The Red Menace.

^"Therefore, rather than being an oxymoron, "libertarian socialism" indicates that true socialism must be libertarian and that a libertarian who is not a socialist is a phoney. As true socialists oppose wage labour, they must also oppose the state for the same reasons. Similarly, libertarians must oppose wage labour for the same reasons they must oppose the state." "I1. Isn´t libertarian socialism an oxymoron" inAn Anarchist FAQ

^Mendes, Silva. Socialismo Libertário ou Anarchismo Vol. 1 (1896): "Society should be free through mankind's spontaneous federative affiliation to life, based on the community of land and tools of the trade; meaning: Anarchy will be equality by abolition of private property (while retaining respect for personal property) and liberty by abolition of authority".

^"We therefore foresee a Society in which all activities will be coordinated, a structure that has, at the same time, sufficient flexibility to permit the greatest possible autonomy for social life, or for the life of each enterprise, and enough cohesiveness to prevent all disorder...In a well-organised society, all of these things must be systematically accomplished by means of parallel federations, vertically united at the highest levels, constituting one vast organism in which all economic functions will be performed in solidarity with all others and that will permanently preserve the necessary cohesion." Gaston Leval. "Libertarian socialism: a practical outline".

^"...preferring a system of popular self governance via networks of decentralised, local, voluntary, participatory, cooperative associations-sometimes as a complement to and check on state power..."

^"LibSoc share with LibCap an aversion to any interference to freedom of thought, expression or choicce of lifestyle." Roderick T. Long. "Toward a libertarian theory of class." Social Philosophy and Policy. Volume 15. Issue 02. Summer 1998. pp 305

^"What is implied by the term 'libertarian socialism'?: The idea that socialism is first and foremost about freedom and therefore about overcoming the domination, repression, and alienation that block the free flow of human creativity, thought, and action...An approach to socialism that incorporates cultural revolution, women's and children's liberation, and the critique and transformation of daily life, as well as the more traditional concerns of socialist politics. A politics that is completely revolutionary because it seeks to transform all of reality. We do not think that capturing the economy and the state lead automatically to the transformation of the rest of social being, nor do we equate liberation with changing our life-styles and our heads. Capitalism is a total system that invades all areas of life: socialism must be the overcoming of capitalist reality in its entirety, or it is nothing." "What is Libertarian Socialism?" by Ulli Diemer. Volume 2, Number 1 (Summer 1997 issue) of The Red Menace.

^"Authority is defined in terms of the right to exercise social control (as explored in the "sociology of power") and the correlative duty to obey (as explred in the "philosophy of practical reason"). Anarchism is distinguished, philosophically, by its scepticism towards such moral relations – by its questioning of the claims made for such normative power – and, practically, by its challenge to those "authoritative" powers which cannot justify their claims and which are therefore deemed illegitimate or without moral foundation."Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism by Paul McLaughlin. AshGate. 2007. p. 1

^Anarchist historian George Woodcock report of Mikhail Bakunin's anti-authoritarianism and shows opposition to both state and non-state forms of authority as follows: "All anarchists deny authority; many of them fight against it." (p. 9)...Bakunin did not convert the League's central committee to his full program, but he did persuade them to accept a remarkably radical recommendation to the Berne Congress of September 1868, demanding economic equality and implicitly attacking authority in both Church and State."

^French individualist anarchist Émile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralised economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory – fatally refractory – morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single are equally repugnant to him.)""Anarchist Individualism as a Life and Activity" by Emile Armand

^Schweickart (2006). "Democratic Socialism". Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. "Social democrats supported and tried to strengthen the basic institutions of the welfare state – pensions for all, public health care, public education, unemployment insurance. They supported and tried to strengthen the labour movement. The latter, as socialists, argued that capitalism could never be sufficiently humanised, and that trying to suppress the economic contradictions in one area would only see them emerge in a different guise elsewhere. (E.g., if you push unemployment too low, you'll get inflation; if job security is too strong, labour discipline breaks down; etc.)"

^This definition is captured in this statement: Anthony Crosland "argued that the socialisms of the pre-war world (not just that of the Marxists, but of the democratic socialists too) were now increasingly irrelevant." Pierson, Chris (June 2005). "Lost property: What the Third Way lacks". Journal of Political Ideologies. 10(2),: 145–163. Other texts which use the terms "democratic socialism" in this way include Malcolm Hamilton Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden (St Martin’s Press 1989).

^Rosa Luxemburg as part of a longer section on Blanquism in her "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" (later published as "Leninism or Marxism?"), writes: "For Lenin, the difference between the Social Democracy and Blanquism is reduced to the observation that in place of a handful of conspirators we have a class-conscious proletariat. He forgets that this difference implies a complete revision of our ideas on organisation and, therefore, an entirely different conception of centralism and the relations existing between the party and the struggle itself. Blanquism did not count on the direct action of the working class. It, therefore, did not need to organise the people for the revolution. The people were expected to play their part only at the moment of revolution. Preparation for the revolution concerned only the little group of revolutionists armed for the coup. Indeed, to assure the success of the revolutionary conspiracy, it was considered wiser to keep the mass at some distance from the conspirators.Rosa Luxemburg, Leninism or Marxism?, Marx.org, last retrieved April 25, 2007

^Marxism–Leninism. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company.

^ abBusky, Donald F. (2000). "Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey". Westport, Connecticut, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.,. p. 8. The Frankfurt Declaration of the Socialist International, which almost all social democratic parties are members of, declares the goal of the development of democratic socialism

^Sejersted and Adams and Daly, Francis and Madeleine and Richard (2011). The Age of Social Democracy: Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0691147741.

^Foundations of social democracy, 2004. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, p. 8, November 2009.

^According to his biographer Neil McKenna, Wilde was part of a secret organisation that aimed to legalise homosexuality, and was known among the group as a leader of "the Cause". (McKenna, Neil. 2003. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.)

^Flood, M. (2007) International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities, Routledge: Abingdon, p. 315